GP1
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Posts posted by GP1
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"My only concern is expectations [at Akron] have been raised so high," said Dambrot.
Spoken like a true "survivor".
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@GP1, as good as that turnaround in season record was, Cooper was also pretty good at getting his team up for the big games:
True. The guy has paid his dues as an assistant. He was an assistant at two different schools in two different conferences that won their conference championship, Oregon and South Carolina. Lots of years on the grapes in the bottle. We still don't know if he is a $75 bottle of wine or $200. The bottle is open and the initial sip was good, but not great yet. A couple of years to open up and and we will know more.
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Wants up-tempo game.
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No, but they were the designs that were conservative enough for the administration to feel safe about using.
Lots of potential humor in this comment. God only knows what college students come up with after two 1-11 seasons. Some must have been really funny.
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TSU went 12-18 the year before he became coach and in three years he had them at 20-13. TSU had not had a 20 win season in 20 years.
For the younger crowd, the Zips used to be in the OVC. It was then and still is a good basketball conference. Turning a program around in that league in only three years is a good accomplishment.
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Does anyone on this forum really know for a fact that KD hasn't gotten an offer for more money from a bigger program than Duquesne, or is this an assumption based on the fact that no previous offer has showed up on Twitter?
Big time programs tend to have big time media around them and things get out. There aren't many reports out there about Dambrot being looked at by big time programs because he isn't being looked at by big time programs. He might get a sniff, but not beyond that.
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KD is running the UA basketball program exactly the way UA wants him to run the basketball program. If he was doing something they didn't like, they'd instruct him to change. If he didn't, they'd replace him.
KD has had enough success that replacing him at this point would be a PR disaster for the program and you of all people should know that. What you are really saying is KD and the University are on the same page with the direction of the program. They want him to survive as bad as he does and they will put up with the lack of success in post season beyond the MAC Tournament to keep the safety in place.
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It all sounded pretty good to me - except for the turnovers... But it's hard to really be too concerned about that because one of the most important stats in football is FORCED Turnovers (more so than TO margin). So even though the offense gave up the turnovers, our defense forced them
I agree. I'm encouraged that the defense is "catching up" to the offense. It should be the other way around so I'll put that in the positive column. The defense has seen this offense a lot now so I would expect them to force some turnovers at this point in the spring season.
Good stuff!
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I'm in general agreement with the rest of what you said, but I don't believe this one bit. If he doesn't deserve to be the highest paid coach in the MAC, then who do you think should be paid higher?
How far do you want to take it? If we pay him the most, then every year when another coach gets more we have to pay him more. That is an upward spiral neither we, nor the other schools in the league can afford. Will it be a $1 million in five years? Can we cut his pay if he doesn't win the MAC again next year?
KD isn't going to leave Akron because the only jobs he will get will be the Duquesnes of the world, which wolud be career suicide. He isn't going to get an offer for a BCS level school where guys make over a million a year because he is too old at this point and his resume doesn't warrant it.
KD likes to play everything safe. He has a safe style of basketball. He recruits safe players who probably will never be a problem. He likes to schedule in a safe manner that gives him 20 guaranteed wins a year. He likes playing in the MAC because most of the teams are relatively easy to beat and the path to 20 wins is relatively easy. Akron is a safe zone for KD. He has organized his entire career to limit risk to his job. With that limiting philosophy comes a limiting of income and I'm sure he knows it and is very comfortable with it. He could be the coach at Akron for the next 15 years even if the program never got better and never produced greater accomplishments greater than they already have. The fans love him and he is well protected by the Board of Trustees. The truth is, he does do a good job and we should be happy with him. When I worked in corporate America, we called guys like him "survivors". They were good at their job, liked their jobs, never said/did anything controversial and underpaid for what they could make somewhere else. Everything they did centered around them surviving for another year. There is nothing wrong with the "survivors" as they are frequently valuable employees.
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If I ever thought that KD had peaked and that the Zips were no longer making progress toward the next level, I'd join in with those looking for a replacement.
As long as TW is the AD, there is no way I would ever allow him to get rid of KD. I wouldn't trust TW to hire a quality replacement.
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Good mechanics will take care of that, and that can be coached too...unless your name is Tebow.
Tim Tebow once completed 71% in a season at Florida. The spread doesn't require a strong arm (although I like both a strong arm and accuracy, but I prefer a brain first and foremost). They coach good mechanics every day. Guys either can or can't at some point, but if they can't it isn't because of coaching. All these guys get is endless coaching. It's up to the players to put the coaching in action.
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Dambrot deserves at least a base of $600,000. If a bad school like Duquesne can afford it, we can too. Forget about soccer and football for a second, and shelf over some money for basketball. Attendance and Zips basketball is on the rise. Many games were packed last season, and with any luck we can carry over our success and start the season strong in 2012-13. I've always felt UA took KD for granted. They really don't know the impact he has had, and the crushing blow it would be to our program if he left. You aren't going to find another KD out there UA, if you don't secure him it WILL cost people their jobs.
Do you think you might be overreacting a little?
Dambrot doesn't deserve a raise and he doesn't deserve to be the highest paid coach in the league. He did less this year than the year before with more in his favor. In the real world, that doesn't get you a raise.
Forget about football after just bringing in the best coach at the school? That's nuts. The soccer program is a national championship contender and we are going to forget about them? That's nuts as well.
I'm going to save Big Zip some typing since he as been saving me some typing recently. KD leaving wouldn't crush the program if we had a competent AD. Takes me back to when Bill Cowher retired and every handwringing Yinzer worried they would never get a coach as good...They got one better. KD has been at Akron for going on nine years. We have seen two senior classes go through. He is what he is at this point and the program may be at the highest point it is going to be with him. If you like winning 20 games, making the MAC Championship game (losing more often than not), making the post season and probably going one and done, he is a great choice. It's not a bad place to be and we should all be proud of the program. There are better places to be though.
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My QB needs a strong arm to be able to make all the throws, the rest can be coached.
Accuracy my friend...accuracy....
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I love the coverage. At the same time, I live in the south and almost every day I hear someone say "dadgum".
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From what I read, Williams seems as if he might be the front runner at this point. My concern about Moore is his staring down his receivers. The spread allows a player to find the open guy among several and when you stare a guy down, you aren't really looking at all options. This team is going to need a steady hand and Williams appears to be the guy doing that. In a couple years when the team is much better, a QB taking risk is OK. Right now, we need to be a little more conservative than I would even want.
Good stuff.
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By the way I've watched this team since the Huggins era. We've made significant progress since then, but I'll continue to say they haven't met expectations lately. We've already had that discussion.
I'm concerned you may be right even through next season. We MAY become the only MAC basketball team that recruited a high school All American and didn't win an NCAA game during his time at the school. I don't think that is too far fetched to say. We beat up on a crappy MAC and bad OOC teams. Lose to Duquesnes and CSU's of the world. KD will be going on his 9th season next year. On the surface, we have beat a bunch of bad teams. Can anyone describe what is below the surface when you really dig deeper?
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The most important thing is to have a better all-around game -- both inside and outside -- and to execute best when it most matters. Clearly, OU has done that better than UA, especially over the last three seasons.
I give great credit to OU for assembling a nice group of quick, sharpshooting guards, and for executing their game plan extremely well against tough competition.
Actually, the most important thing is to have a star player. Take the star player and win/die with that player. OU does that...we don't. OU is a better team because of it. The Zips have two star players. One is underdeveloped and the other doesn't even start and for the life of me I can't figure out why.
OU has a nice group of guards, but let's not kid ourselves. Cooper is the reason they go as far as they do.
Maximizing star talent is how a team wins games. Our style is outdated and we don't win in the clutch because of it.
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The only post on ZN.o that I recall sounding like that is one that I made. But it had nothing at all to do with football, facilities, hiring new coaches, etc., etc. It was in a discussion about the NCAA tournament, and was very narrowly aimed at OU's style of relying so heavily on 3-point shooting to win, and how their NCAA tournament run would end when their outside shooting went cold. It was intended to be complimentary of the Zips' new focus on the inside game, which is generally more reliable over the long run than UA's prior reliance on 3-point shooting.
Here's a link to the original post for those who might want to consider the statement within its original context. And, by the way, I give credit to OU for staying hotter from the outside longer than I thought they would.
The Zips played their last game this year on March 13. OU played their last game this year on March 23. I'm not sure I would stick with the "long run" argument if I were you. One of those teams IS set up for the long run and it is OU.
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Will BG wear scarlet and grey?
Only if they want to draw a crowd.
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They spent how many millions of dollars on a stadium renovations a few years ago? Doesn't sound like money well spent to me.
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I wonder what makes Marla write..."still in the running"?
Just a theory, but after looking at the Dukes job, KD started to run away and hasn't stopped to look back to see if anyone is still chasing him. Just goes to show, "still in the running" can mean a lot of things. He's still running away....
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Oftentimes, I think some fans are blind in assuming that their own program is "doing it the right way". It often appears to me as nothing more than an excuse for why some other program is passing us.
Ken+ flew out ahead of us a decade ago, and we've been trying to catch them ever since. In the meantime, OU has passed us.
Some of our fans need to be much more open to the thought that maybe "our way" really may not be the "best way".
Well said. Kentucky just won a national championship and has been a good program since...well, a heck of a long time. Is Kentucky built for the long term or short term with one-and-done players? If Akron was in the same position as Kentucky right now, then nobody would be saying anything about "building a program we can all be proud of" or "doing it the right way". Calapari did it the right way...he got good players and won a national championship and the fans are extremely happy. What else is there? Calapari won't even let the words "student-athlete" come out of his mouth because he knows why he is there and he knows what the fans expectations are.
Terry Pluto Article on Coaches In the MAC
in Akron Zips Basketball
Posted
Don't try to deflect the discussion as long as I'm posting on this board. My keyboard (years ago, I would have said pen) is too sharp for that.
Goals aren't as important as the execution of the actions one performs to reach the goals. Goals are talk. Execution is where the rubber meets the road. The basketball program talks a lot about becoming the Gonzaga of the East and a mid major giant, but there isn't much behind the talk. In fact, after 8+ years with the same coach, we are a long way away from being anything resembling the talk. We are still a really good MAC team though.
As far as TB's comments, my guess is he believes he can win more than one game next year. The truth is, he doesn't need to lower expectations too much because the expections are so low already. The football program is flat on its back...hardly the situation KD took over after he shoved Hip out the door. Let not anyone on this board kid themselves. The best coach at UofA is sitting in the football office.